A fund-raising campaign has been set up to help return the body of an asylum seeker, found dead in Swansea last week, to his family in Eithipoia.

Friends of 27-year-old Eyob Tefera say they believe he was the man recovered from Swansea Marina on Thursday and held a vigil for the departed next to the Helwick lighthouse ship near the National Waterfront Museum on Monday.

Now a Just Giving crowd-funding page has been set up in his name in a bid to raise £3,000 to fly Eyob home and help his mother with the expense of a funeral.

Rachel Matthews, who runs a project called Bloom, which welcomes and supports refugees and asylum seekers in Swansea as well as a food bank in Mumbles, said: “We’re raising £3,000 to Supporting East African Community to send Eyob’s body home and to help his family with funeral costs in Ethiopia.

“We are supporting the East African community who are raising funds to send Eyob’s body home to Ethiopia, we would also like to help his Mother pay for his funeral. Any money left over will be used to support Asylum Seekers in Swansea.”

Friends of Eyob Tefera gather to remember him at a vigil held in Swansea Marina. (Image: South Wales Evening Post)

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Of his situation over the last year a friend said: “Eyob was from Ethiopia and he was an asylum seeker who’s case had been refused, the Home Office made him destitute.

“This means they made him homeless, they stopped all financial support and told him he wasn’t allowed to work.

“Now you tell me what do you think will happen to someone who has everything stripped away?”

A spokeswoman for the Welsh Refugee Council told the BBC that it wanted to see more efforts to fund those asylum seekers who find themselves in a desperate situation, such as a crisis fund that operates in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

She said: “The Red Cross has led a crisis fund up there that has been successful in helping people, getting people out of destitution and helping people leave homelessness,” said the council’s Althea Collymore.

“In Wales, what we are trying to do, is to see how we can mirror that fund, how we can present that similar offer to people in Wales who are struggling, and are facing destitution.”